Mid-Autumn Festival

As autumn approaches and the nights get longer, the Asian community holds an annual moon festival (a.k.a. Mid-Autumn Festival) with moon cakes, cultural fairs, feasts, martial arts and lion dance performances, and other activities. The Mid-Autumn Festival takes place on the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar. Learn more about this ancient festival from the Ethnic NewsWatch database:

1. Go to the SFPL Home Page and select “Articles & Databases.” You will need a San Francisco Public Library card to get into the databases from outside the Library.

2. Select the Ethnic NewsWatch database.

3. Enter the keywords “moon festival” and “legend” into the search boxes, being sure to use “AND” to link those terms together so they appear within the same document.

4. Select the citation:

August Moon Festival: The story of a goddess and her husband: She took Pill of Immortality and ascended to the moon. Anonymous. The Patriot Ledger. Quincy, Mass.: Aug 15, 2007. p. 3

Here is an excerpt:

"The August Moon Festival is one of two large festivals celebrated by many Asians each year. The festival celebrates the advent of the harvest season and commemorates the ascension of the goddess Chang-O to the Moon Palace.”

The Ethnic NewsWatch database contains articles (including some in Spanish) from newspapers, magazines, journals, and newsletters from the ethnic, minority, and native press, presenting alternate viewpoints from those covered by the mainstream press.